In several recent threads on Canadian politics, it has been mentioned that Canada intends to re-assert its sovereignty and control over the Northwest Passage sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Up to now the NWP has not been a very important shipping route because it is usually impassable to anything but an icebreaker. In fact, no one succeeded in making the passage until Roald Amundson in 1906. But some Canadians think the NWP will take on increasing importance due to global warming.
As a matter of international law, is the NWP Canadian waters or international waters?
Will global warming actually make the NWP more economically important?
Assuming the NWP is under Canadian sovereignty, is impermissive use of it by the U.S. Navy a significant enough violation to make an issue of in U.S.-Canadian relations?
How will it likely play out? Will the U.S. accede to Canadian demands, or continue to insist the waters are international? If the U.S. refuses to back down, what will the Canadians do about it?
Here’s a more basic question: even if it’s deemed that the Northwest Passage is in Canadian territorial waters, what difference does it make? Is Canada proposing to make other nations pay a toll for using it? And how would they do that?
As A Canadian I have to concede that there are very few countries out there who would consider the potential opened NWP anything but International waters. I’d like to think that our Boarders do extend into our territorial waters and as can be seen by any map Our Northern Islands and coast are there. Perhaps someone could explain what international law defines as territorial water limits.
The current trend of thinning ice seems to point towards the NWP becoming accessable in a seasonal way some time in the next fifty years Possibly sooner depending on who you ask. If that is the case it will become cheaper than the current shipping routes.
It could become an issue of contention but I can never see the two countries ever doing more than protesting and appealinmg to international courts.
Will the US acede? Honestly I think it is unlikely. The United States tends to stick to its own beliefs no matter what, and if a junior partner is involved tough for that country. It’s a national attitude that is very unlikely to change.
If it benifits the States, however, there could, one day, be a mutual understanding reached through treaty. But for now it is easier for the States to do what they want knowing there will be very little in the way of consequences so they will do what they want.
Canada can do very little except try to challenge any individual attempts to cross either by ship or pinging any subs with the proposed underwater listening posts. After that all is left is the use of diplomacy and sanctions.
According to this article – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_waters – a state has complete sovereignty over all its “internal waters,” but “innocent passage” is allowed, without permission, through its “territorial waters.” The 1994 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, a state’s “territorial waters” extend 12 nautical miles from its shore. OTOH, the same article states, “All archipelagic waters within the outermost islands of an archipelagic state like Indonesia or the Philippines are also considered internal waters.” One could make a case – and I suppose that would be the Canadian position – that Canada is an “archipelagic state” with respect to the chains of islands off its northern coast, therefore all the waters between those islands, and between the islands and the mainland, are “internal waters” which no other country’s ships may cross without Canadian permission.
Apropos of nothing, here are the lyrics to Canada’s “unofficial national anthem,” “Northwest Passage,” by the late folksinger Stan Rogers (I’ve got most of his albums, on vinyl yet): http://www.geocities.com/~elainedues/lyrics.html#northwest
If the “Northwest Passage” is identified as the route through Lancaster Sound, Barrow Strait, and Viscount Melville Sound, (regardless of entrances or exits to those bodies), I cannot see how anyone would claim that those are international waters and I would be curious to see what arguments the EU, US, and Japan put forth to defend that assertion. Even insisting on a 12 mile limit and holding that the narrows between Griffith Island and Somerset Island are 31 miles wide, leaving a seven mile wide “international” channel, the distance from Lowther Island to Russell Island is only 23 miles (and there are some large rocks that are even closer together. At a guess, it is the “12 mile limit” (ignoring more recent claims for a 200 mile limit) that is being used as the guide. (The even older 3 mile limit might be invoked to claim that Canada does not own the straits, but I cannot believe that any diplomat or lawyer could make that claim with a straight face.) And since I am not aware that anyone actually intends to exit Viscount Melville Sound via McClure Sound, the Prince of Wales Strait is clearly Canadian.
The Straits of Hormuz are around 30 miles across at the two narrowest points, so they don’t help, here. On the other hand, what is the recognized status of Bab al Mandab (the closing of which renders the Suez Canal worthless), which is only 12 miles across. (Since it is shared by two nations, of course, that might make it “international.”)
Does anyone claim that the Dardanelles are international? How about Tsugaru-kaikyo separating the Japanese islands of Hokkaido and Honshu?
If the ice thins to the point of permitting regular transit (even if only in reinforced hull ship) it will definitely be economically important.
If you like wrasslin’ bears.
The Polar Sea transit was undertaken at a time of an adminstration used to high-handed actions. Do you think the current administration is more likely to seek to actually negotiate the issue?
How it plays out depends too much on the players. If Canada waits/hopes for a regime change in 2008 it may play out differently than if Canada tries to compel the current administration to do anything.
All of that is where the “right of innocent passage” enters into it, innit?
Even with that, Canada would still have a Coast-Guard-type obligation to patrol its navigable waters, I would think. Innocent passage isn’t a right to pollute or operate unsafely or interfere with fishing, for instances, and not all passage is necessarily innocent, either.
In places where ships *have * gone routinely, yes, that can and has happened, and why limit it to American ships? The shipping one would expect to see through the NWP would be mostly freighters traveling between Europe and Asia, under whatever flag is convenient. Those shady, underfinanced, rustbucket operations are the ones that would be expected to pose the greatest ecological and safety threats there, just like they are everywhere else. There wouldn’t be much reason to see American tankers there, with the Alaska Pipeline now in place.
But having read the actual convention , I note that it doesn’t actually say international shipping lane. It just spells out rights of transit and navigation. In light of this information, I will revise my comment from “yes” to “it’s the subject of a special treaty.”
I would still be interested to see whether the EU and Japan have made actual arguments for the international status of the route or whether they have simply declared that they don’t choose to recognize that status since they may want to send ships through in the future.
There isn’t much else to say. Canada either is going to defend the NWP, or it isn’t. If we do, which is the plan, it’s ours. If we don’t, we have no right to say it is.
I WILL say that the territorial map that purports to extent Canada’s territory to the North Pole is preposterous. We rightfully own the waters in between the Arctic islands, but that chunk of water extends way, way outside of any rational definition of “Between the Arctic islands.” There’s no justification for just claiming a big swath of open sea because it looks pretty on a map.
So to answer your questions:
Based on what I’ve read so far, it belongs to Canada.
Probably, though it’s just guesswork and a totally different field of study.
Yes, it is.
As always, some kind of deal will be struck if the issue comes up in the foreseeable future. Who knows what could happen 60 years from now, but under current conditions, there’ll be some concessions or something one way or another.
